In 2021, an independent review team told the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments (OBSI) to improve the one-page guide that explains its investigation process to complainants. Add a simple graphic of the investigation process. Give consumers a realistic sense of how long a case takes. OBSI did neither.
Five years later, another team of independent reviewers agreed both changes would help. But it declined to recommend them because no consumer had complained about the guide in the submissions. Few would: a complainant is unlikely to object to a diagram they were never shown, or to a timeline nobody gave them.
The reasoning is circular, and the result is how a recommendation disappears. It is made, ignored and endorsed by the next reviewer — then dropped because nobody raised it again. The problem was not fixed. No one judged the recommendation wrong. It simply came off the list of unfinished business.
The example is small; the weakness it exposes in Canada’s recurring reviews of OBSI is not. Part of each review’s task is a snapshot of whether the last review’s recommendations were carried out. But no review keeps a running ledger — one that holds a recommendation open until it is implemented, formally rejected or overtaken by events for a stated reason.
This is not an argument against the review itself. CRKhoury produced a serious, useful report this year. It read 94 closed complaint files and found OBSI well managed, motivated and compliant with the Bank Act and its Canadian Securities Administrators agreement.
It also tested the industry claim that OBSI is costly and inefficient, and found no support for it — throughput sits within the international range and costs are in line with schemes abroad. A talking point that has shaped years of policy argument did not survive the comparative test.
The institution came through the review well. Its handling of individual cases did not.
OBSI’s guidance says that a consumer’s inability to produce records is not sufficient reason for investigators to reject a complaint. Some investigators did — ruling for the firm even where the remaining evidence favoured the consumer. Consumers may therefore have lost cases the evidence supported.
In complex cases, consumers were not always shown the firm documents used to decide against them.
And the complainant interview, once a basic step in any investigation, is no longer an absolute requirement.
Consumers were most disadvantaged at the point where a case was decided. When OBSI concluded that a firm should pay, it sent the firm a written proposal setting out its reasoning. It did not send the same document to the consumer. The firm could challenge OBSI’s analysis before it became final. The consumer could not.
Taking accountability
The review recommended a fix for each of these fairness failures, and OBSI has accepted or broadly supported them. It plans to address document-sharing through new rules and guidance, supports interviewing complainants unless impractical and agrees consumers should get the same written proposal it sends the firm. As a statement of intent, that response is unobjectionable.
What it lacks is the one thing that turns agreement into accountability: dates. The question is not whether OBSI supports a fix, but when it will implement it. OBSI should publish a table identifying, for every recommendation it accepts, the person responsible, the work required and the completion date.
The three fairness fixes should come first, because each can change the outcome of an individual case.
The harder problems are not OBSI’s alone to fix. The maximum monetary compensation it can recommend for a single complaint is $350,000, where it was set in 2002. The 2021 reviewers said it should be raised to $500,000. Nothing happened.
This review says $550,000, indexed, with a structural review every five years. OBSI supports the change but needs regulators to act.
Binding authority — the power to make a firm pay what OBSI finds is owed — has a longer history of the same treatment. The 2011 review recommended it. The 2016 and 2021 reviews did the same. The 2026 review recommends it again.
OBSI cannot grant itself that power. The securities regulators must finish the framework and the provinces must legislate it.
Other issues remain outstanding. Investment firms are allowed 90 days to handle a complaint before an investor can escalate; banks get 56. Comparable countries commonly allow 30.
Peer countries have one regulator setting expectations for their ombudsman — Canada has several. The 2026 review says that makes the regulatory voice less clear. No one regulator is responsible for a recommendation.
That is a second design flaw. OBSI commissions the review and receives the recommendations. But the regulators and governments who need to act face no equivalent obligation to follow up.
Both flaws come down to two absences: nobody’s name on a recommendation and no date beside it. A commitment without a date cannot be missed, and what cannot be missed is never met.
Both are available without new authority. OBSI can attach a name and a completion date to every recommendation it has accepted and publish the list. The securities regulators and the provinces can state what they intend to do with the recommendations directed at them and by when. Neither is hard. Both are overdue.
